Tiny Town, USA – In a world of woe, tinytowntimes.com cleaves the gloom of our waking dreams with its first-ever collection of 60 of Adam Perl's Tiny Town Teasers.

Also known as "The World's Smallest Crossword Puzzles" this 5 x 7 treat ($9.95) is sure to please the most ardent puzzle-solver as well as newbies to the tiny genre. Perl's status as a crossword crafting wizard is well known among elite grid-crackers at every level of word-smithery. Non-believers, pay attention to the following:

Perl began crafting puzzles in the mid-1980s. In 1998, he got his first crossword published in The New York Times. He's since had 24 puzzles published in the Times, widely considered to be the "gold standard" of crossword puzzles. In a 2011 NY Times puzzle compilation entitled "Will Shortz Picks His Favorite Puzzles," Shortz said of one of Perl’s crosswords, "Here is a great Monday puzzle - simple, easy, and gorgeously planned and constructed." Perl has created over 1000 puzzles and was recently commissioned by Cornell University to construct a crossword for their upcoming sesquicentennial.

Not Convinced? Read on!

In Tiny Town (a.k.a. Ithaca, N.Y.), he also creates crossword puzzles for local publications, fundraisers and special occasions. In spring of 2014, he constructed three puzzles at various increasing levels of difficulty for a fundraiser for the Tompkins County Learning Partnership. His toughest was a challenge even for the great Rex Parker, who dubs himself the “63rd Greatest Crossword Solver in the Universe." Parker, who writes the popular crossword blog "Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle" at http://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/, said “Adam’s puzzles could hold their own in any major tournament in the country.” (EZRA Magazine, Cornell Quarterly Magazine, Summer 2014.) Five year's ago, Perl came up with the idea of what he dubbed "The World's Smallest Crossword Puzzles" which came to be known as the Tiny Town Teasers. Since then, over 600 teasers have appeared online in the tinytowntimes.com. This book is a compilation of some of his favorites.

Tinytowntimes.com is proud to present its second publication since its founding in 2009 -- thanks to Rigel Stuhmiller, a.k.a. Belinda Cho, and ... Well, okay: Franklin Crawford, erratic administrator. And Chad Coles, AdQ and so many more.

The World's Smallest Crossword Puzzles will be available beginning Dec. 10 in Ithaca area shops and an Amazon.com

Stay tuned for more alerts – Yes, Virginia, there is good news in Tiny Town!!!

Editor's note:The following is the text from a Change.org petition. In the past, the staff at tinytowntimes.com has refrained from asking readers to participate in any sort of Interweb campaign. This one is different. I've interviewed Mohammad and Adrian Kinsella, the marine captain to whom Mohammad reported. The Afghani Pashtun, son of a brave and proud father, put his life on the life again and again for his country by serving with U.S. forces. The State Department promised to offer naturalization papers to these allies and their families, but have since reneged. While we had plenty of money to invest toward invading Afghanistan, the coffers were surprisingly dry when it came to bailing out the people who helped us and their families and remain in mortal danger. Mohammad is one of the "lucky" ones, but only by sheer dint of the efforts of Capt. Kinsella, who pursued his mission to "leave no one behind" with true U.S. Marine spirit. A process that should have taken three months, took three-and-a-half years and help from the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Program, the Pat Tillman Foundation as well as 11 congressional and Senate "inquiries." Now a third year Tillman scholar at UC Berkeley's Law School, Kinsella paid out-of-pocket for calls to US Embassies and in Kabul and elsewhere, almost all of which led nowhere. A piece I've written about that effort will appear in the Nov-Dec issue of Cornell Alumni News: Adrian is a 2007 CU graduate who decided to join ROTC in his junior year; five days after graduating he reported to Officer Candidate School in Quantico, Va. If we can in any way redeem ourselves for the harm done to people who helped us, this is certainly one path.

As an Afghan interpreter for the U.S. military, it was my honor to serve the United States.

But in retaliation for my work alongside the U.S. Marines, the Taliban captured, tortured, and murdered my father. I moved my family to safety and continued to serve. Three years later, the Taliban struck my family again by kidnapping my my then three-year old brother and holding him for ransom. We paid the ransom and fled the country. I was able to come to the U.S. this January, but my family remains in danger. I need your help to save them.

I have never seen my father happier than when I told him I was volunteering to be an interpreter for the U.S. Marines. He told me he was proud that his son had chosen to serve with the Americans to free Afghanistan from the Taliban's rule.

In the summer of 2009, while I was working at the main entry gate of Marine Corps Base Camp Dwyer, a Taliban sympathizer from my hometown of Kandahar recognized me. A few days later, Dad disappeared.

A broadcast soon came over the radio: an unidentified body had been found in a dried riverbed and needed to be claimed at the morgue. My mother made a trip that no wife should ever have to make to see if the body was that of her husband. By this time, Dad had been missing for a week.

In the morgue, Mom found a body with missing fingertips and riddled with bullet holes, including one in the head. She knew we had lost Dad when she noticed the body’s shoes– my father was still wearing the sandals I had given him as a keepsake when I left to work as an interpreter. We wore the same size shoes.

PHOTO ABOVE(provided): Mohammad's father, Yousafzi: He was proud of his son for resisting the Taliban and paid a terrible price for protecting his beloved boy's life.

In the face of such tragedy, and despite continued mortal risk to myself and my family, I decided to continue to serve alongside Coalition Forces for three more years in an effort to improve my country.

Sadly, after four years serving with the Coalition Forces and the U.S. Military, the Taliban once again struck my family, kidnapping my then 3-year old brother.

My big brother, Adrian Kinsella, has spent the last three-and-a-half years fighting to get me safely to the United States. With the help of nonprofits such as IRAP, the Pat Tillman Foundation, and fellow Americans citizens, my big brother reached out to politicians and media across the country and elicited the aid of 11 U.S. Senators and Congressmen to expedite the process. In January, I arrived. I am now living with Adrian in Berkeley and have already landed a job at a video equipment manufacturer.

I don’t fear for my safety tonight, but I know that my family continues to suffer. They live their current lives as if in a prison; they cannot work, go to school, or even leave their house. Please help me free them from this prison and bring them to safety.

Editor's Note: For a time back in the latter part of the 20th Century, Tiny Town had a Rational Recovery group; they were a mix of drunks and druggies who found most 12-step programs far too saturated with supernatural references. They were a good if hardbitten crew and they looked after one another best they could; I helped a friend one night he was slip-sliding away and got a sock on the jaw for the effort. It was a good punch, but he was a featherweight and it only made the nub of my chin sore for a couple days.

He is sober today!

That group eventually folded -- space was getting hard to find and members tended to move on.

There's a new kind of recovery group animal in town now and it's a good herd. The group takes the term "freethinker" to be all-inclusive: Anyone who is G-d-conscious is more than welcome to attend. Atheist ranters, too, only the group prefers to maintain a certain level of civility. There are no readings, or introductions with the exception of the text below.

Folks in recovery who think such a group is limited only to G-d-bashing Darwinists, cynics and devil-worshippers, might well consider dropping-in on this amiable bunch of folks whose main purpose is to stay sober by sharing their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problems. Alcoholics and substance abusers welcome. However, this is not Weight Watchers or Emotions Anonymous or any of the many 12-step offshoots.

The group is designed on the principles in the AA preamble. The flier that follows this note should give you the gist of it. And, happy birthday, Cayuga Freethinkers: They are one month old and can be found in the guide to AA meetings in the area.

WHEN: Thursdays, 8 p.m.

WHERE: Unitarian Parish House sublevel, 306 N. Aurora Street -- found in the alley between the Church and the Parish House, door on the right. No smoking on the premises. BYOC ... Water is potable and available. Anyone with a desire to stop drinking and using is welcome.

Tiny Town, USA – Downtown can use any kind of goo news right now. Here's some: Bridgette was postering her neighborhood on Tuesday night, Sept. 23. She was at Standard Art Supply on East Seneca, around the corner from where her beloved kitty Otisco went missing two days earlier. Bridgette, Otisco's loco parent, tells the story:

"We were outside Tuesday night papering the neighborhood with fliers in case anyone found him," she says.

"I had just finished putting up and distributing probably close to 100 of them," she says. "We stopped by Standard Art to admire some posters they had wheat-pasted on their building, and, as we were talking about them, I looked across the alley and he (Otisco) was right there watching us."

Bridgette adds: "After some coaxing he came over and was scooped up and cuddled for the rest of the night! Well, after we went back out to go retrieve all the fliers we had just distributed. Ha-ha. Someone else who had been in contact with me about him emailed to say he was glad we had found him and congratulated me on having the most famous cat in Ithaca, at least for a few days (thanks to social media bombardment) hahaha. What a great community we live in."